Fear the Walking Dead Season 6 will have an “entirely different format” than The Walking Dead and the untitled third TWD series, according to chief content officer Scott Gimple. The Fear executive producer says the spinoff’s sixth season, in the works from Seasons 4 and 5 showrunners Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg, will be character-driven with episodes focusing on one or just a handful of characters at a time, as result of the Season 5 finale that ended with the group led by Morgan (Lennie James) forcibly separated by Pioneer leader Virginia (Colby Minifie) and scattered across various colonies.
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“With a 16-episode season, two halves of eight make for good arcs. I will say that on Fear the Walking Dead, the way that the stories are going to be told next year are going to be very different than the other two shows,” Gimple said on The Hollywood Reporter‘s “TV’s Top 5” podcast. “It’s just gonna have an almost entirely different format.”
He continued, “I think we’ve seen just such wonderful stories on that show that have been, like, deeply focused on character and really shining a light on single or a couple of characters an episode, with beginnings, middles and ends, and that’s what we’re looking towards on that show.”
At San Diego Comic-Con in July, Chambliss and Goldberg teased a season-ending “big change” would “shake the entire group to the very core and really change the show in a way that will launch us into Season 6, in a really big way.”
Chambliss would later hint that twist would reinvent Fear and “change the narrative approach of how we tell stories in Season 6.” This new approach to storytelling, with a splintered ensemble, means more singular focused episodes tightly centered on a select few characters.
“We’re going to follow our characters on a very different journey — a far darker one — in Season 6 and that required them to face, not just an adversary who views the world in a way contrary to everything our heroes fought for this season, but also to find themselves in positions where their belief in the benevolent world they were fighting for will be challenged at every turn,” the showrunners recently told Deadline. “The answer ultimately lied in having Virginia separate everyone, sending them to different corners of her apocalyptic domain.”
Now without Morgan — whose fate has been left up in the air, to be decided either in Fear Season 6 or elsewhere — the convoy members “all find themselves in some of the lowest places we’ve ever seen them.”
“The question that we’ll carry forward into Season 6 — aside from the obvious question surrounding whether or not Morgan will live or die — is whether our characters will be able to hold onto this growth under Ginny’s rule, whether they’ll backslide, or whether they’ll become versions of themselves we’ve yet to see,” the showrunners said.
AMC has yet to announce a return date for Fear Season 6, expected for 2020. New episodes of The Walking Dead Season 10 premiere Sundays at 9/8c on AMC. For more TWD intel, follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter.
